


Playing Slender

by shulamithbond



Series: Reality X [10]
Category: IT - Stephen King, Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Slender Man - Fandom, Slender Man Mythos
Genre: Ableism, Autism, Creepypasta, Cryptids, Disabled Character, Disabled Character of Color, F/M, Gen, Genocide, Horror, Lovecraftian, Nonverbal Communication, Other, Rare Fandoms, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Supernatural Elements, Urban Legends, well sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shulamithbond/pseuds/shulamithbond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written for Halloween, some messing around with cryptids and foreshadowing. I own just about none of these characters, or the places referenced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

        Maggie Burroughs was sitting alone in the nearly-empty baggage claim, practicing a conversation in her mind.

         _Well hello there, taxi driver – and how much to drive me to the town written on this slip of paper? “Salem’s Lot”? Yes, I know you’ve never heard of it. No, don’t bother Googling it or asking Siri. You won’t find anything. No, well, see, it doesn’t exist. Not officially. No, I haven’t actually been there. No, I don’t know anyone who lives there – at least, I don’t have their address or phone number. Yes, I’m sure it’s where I want to go._

         _No, sir, I’m not on any new medications. No, I don’t think I should be._

         But when you really thought about it, why should the concept of a town that didn’t officially exist be so hard? Little towns like this were always disappearing and reappearing on the map. That little place in Massachusetts with the famous wax museum, for instance – Ambrose, wasn’t it? Yeah, Ambrose – where had _that_ gone? You asked questions about it to people who’d written newspaper stories about the place now and they looked at you like you had three heads.

         Even right here in Maine – well, Maine and New England in general seemed to be one of the worst-hit areas, actually. There was the town, allegedly up near the Dead Zone’s border, where every street flooded once a year, as if the place was cleansing itself – where no one went down into the sewers anymore, not even sanitation workers, yet they stayed in working order seemingly by magic (as if someone else was already down there, watching out for everything). And another town not too far away had disappeared completely – all the people, except for two boys, one of whom had been missing and presumed dead for years, who were found a few miles outside the town’s limits. The official story was that the townspeople had asphyxiated or been poisoned due to a large gas leak. It was just about believable due to the strange pollution that hovered over the town in almost a sort of atmospheric bubble, and the giant hole in the ground in the woods not too far away, where it looked as if people had dug something up – something big. What had kept Maggie from believing it was the fact that the polluting gas in question was apparently of a type never before seen on Earth, or at least not existing in any record. Besides, even if a whole town had been poisoned that way, there should still have been bodies. And where had the two little boys come from? When found, they hadn’t been able to answer many questions, and they hadn’t been given much of a chance.

         And there was Springwood.

        But Springwood had, if anything, the opposite problem, Maggie reflected. It tried to disappear, but it couldn’t, not really – sure, it faded gradually into American gothic mythology, but it was there; people wouldn’t forget about it, they didn’t really stop talking about it (they kept making movies about it). It had tried to change its name; it had tried everything. But it kept on being Springwood, and it kept on being there.

        But the point was that funny things kept happening to these little towns, all across the country. It was amazing, once you noticed it – you couldn’t stop noticing. And you couldn’t help but wonder why no one else was picking up on it. You wanted to _shake_ people awake; to _make_ them see it.

         _Is this how it started with my father?_

         Of course, that was the other possibility. That she was just going crazy. After all, there was a genetic predisposition, wasn’t there?

         Maggie looked back down at the name of the town, which she’d scribbled hastily on a scrap of paper back at the Springwood library. So, no taxi. Well, she might have better luck just renting a car and taking her chances anyway. She glanced out the window at the end of the hall; despite the darkness, she could see the Maine November snow falling in big, feathery flurries. But she’d driven up into the mountains of Colorado in worse than this.

         A shout went up a few luggage carousels down, and Maggie peered over. A man and a woman were making their way – the woman was hurrying, almost bouncing; the man was walking more slowly, slouching as if eager to avoid drawing attention – toward two other men, who were tugging suitcases behind them. Maggie observed them, feeling nosy, but grateful for the distraction. The two men with the luggage – the travelers, presumably – were both tall, but otherwise seemed to be opposites. The one in the lead, striding happily, was broad-shouldered and muscular, of a jovial bearing, with luxuriant strawberry-gold hair that fell to just below his shoulders. His companion – though the two struck Maggie as more brotherly than couple-like – was almost painfully slender, the effect enhanced by the long, black, fitted coat he wore, which looked almost as if it came from the women’s department. He wore his hair long as well, but it was less voluminous in texture, with a curl to it at the tips, and jet black.

         The woman ran up and embraced the dark-haired man. She was visibly young, in her very early twenties it seemed to Maggie, despite her body – a little short and chubby, curves lending her perhaps some age from far away – and despite the layers of gauzy, lacy, faintly floral cloth in shades of white, blue, and pink that covered her body under her black coat, which came off as either juvenile or matronly depending on how you were looking. She looked especially comical with her arms around the waist of the tall young man, the top of her head barely reaching his chest. He bent down to wrap his arms around her, and Maggie looked away discreetly as they kissed.

         She fixed her attention on the man who’d arrived with the young woman. Something was familiar about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. He was a bit short – shorter than the two newcomers, anyway – and wiry, dressed in a trench coat, boots, and a fedora hat, which made the feeling of deja-vu even worse. He hung back a bit from the greetings, but he did nod at the dark-haired man, and he exchanged a somewhat stiff handshake with the blond man (who clapped him warmly on the shoulder right afterward, as if he couldn’t allow the other to get away without something). The man in the fedora pulled away from him, and stood back once more, looking around idly at the hall as Maggie herself was now doing.

        She had only the faintest shiver of apprehension before he turned, and their eyes met. Recognition flowed into Maggie’s mind, sending shivers down her spine, her blood running cold, her stomach turning over, her fingers dropping the handle of her suitcase. It clattered to the linoleum floor.

         She didn’t even hear it.

         He wasn’t wearing his usual face – he didn’t have the scars – but she could still tell. And she knew he’d seen her.

         Freddy Krueger. _My father._

* * *

 

          She stopped watching the group after that, or at least stopped registering what her eyes were focused on, because she jumped about a foot in the air when the young woman from the group came up and parked herself about a foot in front of the bench where Maggie was sitting. < _Um, excuse me? >_

         And Maggie couldn’t even think what to say to her. The girl was either an unholy demon of some kind, or a dead girl walking, and in either case, what were you supposed to _say?_ She’d never been good at being social anyway, except maybe when it came to a therapeutic setting.

         The girl gave a small, sympathetic smile, as if she knew just what Maggie was thinking. She did not meet Maggie’s eyes; her gaze settled on the bridge of Maggie’s nose. < _Yes, I know who you are. Where are you headed? Maybe we could give you a lift_. > She indicated her group.

         A part of Maggie registered that the girl was not “speaking” in the traditional sense of the term – Maggie was perceiving the words, sure, but they weren’t coming in via her ears. Telepathy of some kind, then – pretty sophisticated. Even just a few years ago, that by itself might have freaked her out. Now…well, it was still unusual, but when you compared it to some of the other stuff she’d heard of and seen, it barely registered.

         Instead she wondered if, knowing what this girl apparently knew, she seriously expected Maggie to just _get into a car_ with…with _him._

         _Then again,_ said a voice in her head, _you did come hundreds of miles to find him, and now here he is._

         “Well,” she said, finding her voice at last. “I’m looking for…well, I think it’s called the, uh… ‘Dead Zone’? Because allegedly there’s all this interference with satellites and radio signals and everything, so you can’t contact it, and they say nothing that goes into it ever”-

         The girl nodded. She didn’t seem skeptical at all, as Maggie had somehow sensed she wouldn’t be. < _That’s where we’re headed. We live up there. >_

         Maggie took a deep, cleansing breath. “Then…a lift would be great. Thanks.”

        It occurred to her as she grabbed her suitcase and followed the girl – as every step took her closer to him – that no one would notice her leaving with these people. No witnesses. It was quite possible the infamous Dead Zone would swallow her up, just like in all the stories she’d heard and collected and studied, without even a trace. 

* * *

 

        The car ride had been quiet, as one might expect. The flurries of snow still falling thickly had seemed to shut out noise, and even the tinny radio in the car – his car, she knew it was; it _looked_ beat up and abandoned, it _looked_ like something you’d secretly bury the charred remains of a dead body in – seemed muffled.

       Maggie had thankfully been squeezed into the back seat between the two men. The car’s heating system was on its last leg anyway, and the big golden-haired man seemed to be half-radiator. He smiled down at her. “Greetings.” His voice started out as a boom, but lowered itself as he glanced over at his traveling companion, who had shut his eyes and curled up on his seat cushion with a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Up in the front passenger’s seat, the girl who’d approached Maggie had also donned headphones, although hers were a smaller pair, and plugged into what looked like some kind of MP3 player. “You are Katherine Krueger?”

        Maggie struggled to keep her tone civil as the cold sweat washed over her. “Maggie Burroughs. That’s what I’d…that’s my name.” She glanced up at the driver’s seat, but got no impression that she’d even been heard.

        “Oh…of course. I am sorry.” The man looked bemused, but sincerely apologetic. “I am Thor, son of Odin. That is my brother, Loki,” he added, gesturing at the sleeping man.

        Maggie tried to smile. “I’m sure you hear this a lot, but…you two are named after Norse gods.”

        Thor looked as though he was deciding among several responses, all equally complicated and cumbersome. His brow furrowed almost comically. “Well, yes…and no. Not exactly.” He cleared his throat. “Forgive my mysterious words. I would tell you what it is I truly mean, but I do not think you would believe me.”

        “I think you’d be surprised what I’ll believe.”

        He nodded. “Very well, then. I am not simply named after the Norsemen’s god of thunder. I am he. Or rather, the being his legends are based upon.” The man smiled with charming modesty. “We are no gods, I assure you.”

        Maggie nodded slowly. _All right_. It wasn’t as if he’d actually claimed to be a _god_ , after all. _Per se_. “I believe you,” she said, mostly truthful.

       “I hope that you will stay with us in our home,” the man – or whatever he was – Thor continued. “There is plenty of space, and the road into town, where other lodgings are, may need to be dug out by the time we arrive.”

        “Uh…” Maggie didn’t want to be rude – she had a feeling that Thor was one of those people who did a great “kicked puppy” face – but she still balked at spending the night under the same roof as her father. “Are you _sure_ you’ll have room? Who…uh…who lives there?”

        “ _Not me_.” The growl from the front made them both jump; Maggie realized it was _him_. “ _Just in case_ you were wondering.”

        Was he in her mind? Could he hear her thoughts? Maggie shook her head, willing herself not to worry about it – if for no other reason than that there was nothing she could do about it either way.

        “Loki, and Aoife,” Thor replied, filling the cold silence. “She is Aoife,” he added, indicating the young woman up front. “And myself, of course, and my partner, Crys. And our daughter, the little girl we care for. Hela.”

        _You have a child – an actual child – and you hang around with him?!_ Maggie wanted to scream at him. She took a deep breath. “Oh…how nice.”

        Thor grinned, and despite herself, Maggie did feel slightly better. Slightly. “How fortunate that we met like this tonight,” he remarked, musing aloud. “Crys will meet her sister at last.”

        _Wait, what?_

         Maggie stared up at him. In the front seat, she could nearly hear the straining of her father’s ears. _“Sister?”_ she echoed at last.

        Thor’s eyes widened in panic. “Yes, I…I thought you…I thought perhaps you might…” he sagged dejectedly. “I am so sorry. That I revealed this to you in such a way, I mean. Crys is your…sibling. Your half-sibling, I suppose. She has mentioned many times that she would enjoy meeting you.”

        “Oh.” Maggie honestly couldn’t think of any other response. She contented herself with glaring at the back of the driver’s seat, imagining her eyes boring holes through it and into _his_ back. But then, what else could she have expected from _him_ but this level of…of _irresponsibility?_

        She tried not to think about the biological implications of it. After all, “the birds and the bees” wasn’t supposed to apply to dead people – not even powerful undead entities.

        What had she come to the Dead Zone expecting to find? Restless spirits? Yes. Any number of undead or subhuman ghoulish monsters? Quite possibly. Rural, quasi-Christian agriculture-based blood cults? Why not?

        She hadn’t been expecting a long-lost sister and Norse gods and a situation that looked like it was trying to be a sitcom, or at least some kind of thinly-premised drama. This, she’d had no practice with.

* * *

 

        The house sat on a hill that looked rather dramatically over a stone outcropping. Maggie could hear water rushing somewhere below it. The house itself wasn’t what she’d expected; it was painted white, big and beautiful, with a long porch that wrapped around it. Picturesque, especially considering the scraggly black trees that grew around it and the thin growth of grass and moss that covered patches of bare rock around the yard.

        Maggie followed Thor and the still bleary-eyed Loki up the walk; Aoife and Krueger trailed behind. Maggie tried not to stare at the image of the girl leaning on _his_ arm slightly as she ambled slowly over the icy path. Nobody but her seemed to register the profound discord of the sight; this clearly happened on a regular basis. She felt goosebumps raise on her arms as Aoife rang the doorbell. Outside, the only sounds were the water below the outcropping and the faint, empty sound of the wind in the night.

        The door swung slowly open with a creak.

         There was no one beyond it. The hall was lit brightly, but empty.

         A shiver went up Maggie’s spine.

         She followed Aoife in – and a face dropped down in front of her.

         Maggie reared back with a gasp that was more of a scream than she wanted it to be. Thor and especially Loki were giving her looks; even _he_ looked like he wanted to kill her. Well, he’d looked like that since the airport, but it was more pronounced now.

         < _Hela! >_ Aoife exclaimed happily, reaching up and lifting down what looked like a baby girl, about eighteen months or so old, with nut-brown skin, head covered with a curly fuzz of auburn baby hairs, and dressed in a purple tutu and a small pair of purple silk butterfly wings. Somehow, she’d been hanging upside down from the front hall light fixture. As she turned in the air, Maggie realized that the skin on about half the little girl’s body was covered in some kind of vein-like ridging – _scars_ , said a dark voice in her head. Her limbs moved more feebly on that side, too, it seemed.

         “What did she do?” Loki piped up a bit sleepily for the first time, standing by Aoife as she let Thor (who planted a whiskery kiss on Hela as he passed her), Maggie, and her father past her through the door.

         From inside, Maggie watched in shock as the baby girl wriggled out of Aoife’s arms and crawled up onto her shoulders like an ant, wrapping pudgy arms around her head and burying her little face in Aoife’s hair. < _I think she figured out how to turn the doorknob with her web_ ,> Aoife was explaining proudly, hands flapping themselves on her wrists. < _Is that what you did, Nip? Did you figure out how to open doors with your web? Did you open the door for us? >_

          “I hope she didn’t. We’ll have to start locking doors to keep her out,” Loki remarked.

         Maggie shook herself out of it; she knew that if she stayed here she’d ask some question about – well, about what Hela _was_ – and come off as rude, so she drew farther into the house, following the warmth and the smells of cooking food. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.

 

* * *

 

          She came into the kitchen-den area to find Thor embracing someone slightly too short for him, who was slender with short, slightly gelled brown hair, and dressed in well-fitting jeans, a green sweater, and a collared shirt with some kind of small, colorful, busy pattern that Maggie couldn’t make out. Maggie suspected they were female because of what she could see of their body shape, and this was confirmed for her when Thor finally released them and they – she – turned toward Maggie. Unlike Aoife, who could probably just about manage a description of “compelling” or “not _ugly_ ,” this young woman was actually quite pretty, with pixie-cut chestnut hair, a heart-shaped face with good high cheekbones, a wide, friendly smile, and warm gray eyes.

         The young person – the young woman? – turned and beamed at Maggie. “ _Katherine?”_

         Maggie tried not to let her look sour. “Maggie, actually. Are you…Crys?”

         “That’s me!” the young woman bounded forward, as if about to hug Maggie, but was able to restrain herself to a handshake. “Crys Wilkes, nice to meet you; pronouns ‘they’ or ‘she’ in case you were wondering. It is really so great to meet you, though – come on in, warm up, make yourself at home – welcome to our house.” She glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen, at a heavyset woman doing something over the stove, her back to the commotion. “Hey Mom, did you already start boiling the water for the tea?”

         “What?” the woman turned, and sighed as comprehension apparently hit her. “Oh no, _darn_ it, I was thinking about something to do with work and I completely forgot what I was trying to do.”

         “No, that’s great actually, I was just going to ask you if you could add more water for Maggie here to have some, too.”

         The woman gave Maggie a friendly nod. She and Crys definitely bore some resemblance; you could see it in the face. “Of course, honey.”

         “Actually, now that everything’s nearly done, I could do the tea,” offered Crys. “You could go in and sit down; you seem tired”-

         “Well, I am, but I can _make tea_. Don’t _worry_ about it.”

         Crys gave Maggie a little ‘ _she has her pride’_ shrug. “Here, why don’t we go in the living room? There’s a fire going. Aoife got most of dinner started before she and Dad left, but it’ll be a few more minutes until everything’s ready.” 

 

* * *

 

         Maggie couldn’t for the life of her understand why this Aoife girl was bothering with her father, or exactly what the nature of their – well – relationship was ( _although, do I really want to know that? Probably not_ ). She had serious doubts about Aoife’s sanity that were only becoming more and more justified. But she had to admit that if the girl had made all this, then at least she could cook. There was brisket and green beans and mashed potatoes, all of it hot enough that between that and the tea, Maggie soon went from chilled and damp to almost too warm. It was all delicious.

         Finally, the meal appeared to be over, and without the distraction of food, the awkwardness of sitting just down the long dining room table from her actual father (if he didn’t live with them, so to speak, then what the hell was he still doing here? _But I need him to still be here, so I guess it’s lucky he hasn’t gone yet_ ) was seeping back. Crys brought out three bottles: wine for her, Aoife, Loki, Thor, and Maggie; a beer for Freddy; and sparkling grape juice for Hela and, oddly, Crys’ mother, who smiled at Maggie, rather self-consciously. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t introduce myself before. I’m Annie.”

         Maggie smiled back as best she could. _You actually reproduced with my father. Whether by accident or on purpose, you were in a situation with him where reproduction was possible. I’m not even going to wonder about how you had a baby with a dead guy; I’m just going to focus on the fact that you apparently thought this wouldn’t be a terrible idea_. “Hi. Maggie. Burroughs.”

         “Nice to meet you, Maggie.”

         “Um, thanks. You too.” It was going to be a long evening. Maggie reached for her wine.

 

* * *

 

         “So what _has_ been happening in town?” Loki asked, sipping his wine.

        “What was that thing you and Dr. Lecter were investigating, Mom?” Crys asked Annie.

        < _Sleepwalking, wasn’t it? >_ Aoife added. < _Something about that? >_

        “Oh yes, that’s right.” Annie took a quick sip of her sparkling grape juice.

        “You see,” she began. “In town, lately, we’ve been having what I guess…well, I _suppose_ you could call it a kind of…sleepwalking epidemic. People are going out – day or night – to do whatever it is they need to do, just like normal, and…they wake up in their beds, fully clothed, with no more than a few hours having passed. But they have no memory of getting there. Just of being out, on their way, and then…well, they say it’s a blank after that. All they remember is waking up in their beds.”

         Maggie glared at Freddy, who folded his arms. “It’s not me.”

        “Freddy has alibis,” Annie reassured her. “And it isn’t your style, anyway,” she added to Freddy, who nodded, looking grudgingly appeased. “I thought it might be some kind of seizure, or a new type of narcoleptic fit. Dr. Lecter thinks it might be some sort of trauma reaction, though.”

        < _Trauma about what?_  > Aoife asked.

       Annie took another drink. “Well, that’s the question.”

       The table grew silent as everyone present – with the possible exception of Hela, and even she seemed to sense the shift in mood, sinking down into her seat a bit, her legs going still – contemplated this. For a while, the only sounds were the crackling of the fire in the next room, and the wind whistling around the house. 

 

* * *

 

 

         Maggie cleared her throat at last. “Well, speaking of mysteries, I guess, that’s why I came up here.” She addressed her father. “We need to talk.” She paused. “I don’t mind if anyone else is present. It’s…not really subject matter for kids, though.”

         Aoife nodded. < _In a little while. If it can wait. >_ The girl pushed out her chair. < _I think some of the leftovers are still out… >_

         Freddy groaned. “Are you going to – Aoife, sit down, I said _no_ ”-

         < _We have way too much food left. It’s not a problem. >_

         “Woman, what part of ‘undead dream entity that doesn’t need to eat’ don’t you understand?”

         “Dad, just take the damn plate,” Crys called from the kitchen, where she’d begun to wash dishes. Freddy sat back in his chair, looking resigned.

        Aoife’s manner had changed since coming back to the house; she was less awkwardly, earnestly cheerful and instead smoother; more calmly confident. Secure. _This is her place_ , Maggie reflected.

         She nodded, feeling awkward. “Um…sure, Aoife,” she called into the kitchen. “It can wait. Uh…is there anything I can do to help with the cleanup?”

 

        Hela had made what were ostensibly welcome-home cards for her two “Daddies”; watercolors featuring blobby, imprecise stick people and barely-readable letters spelling out their names. Still, Maggie mused, considering the girl’s apparent age and difficulties with verbal speech production (she’d been silent all night, not even cooing or trying out syllables in her mouth, as most babies her age would do), it was impressive that she could write at all. < _She also says she wants to play ‘beauty shop’ with you again_ ,> Aoife informed Loki. < _She really loves your hair. > _With telepathy like hers, Maggie reflected, communicating with Hela was probably relatively easy;maybe easier than Hela's other parents found it.

        “And who could blame her?” Loki laughed, placing his card reverently on the sideboard, away from the food and melted candle wax.

 

* * *

 

        The table cleared, and cleanup mostly finished, Aoife watched Annie settle back into her seat with a mug of tea. Crys and Thor were already wrestling with Hela on the rug in the den, and even in her fatigued state, Aoife perceived that Loki was fidgety, anxious for them to go to bed, or go and be alone together somehow, or at least join their daughter.

         < _Go let Hel do your hair_ ,> she suggested to Loki. < _I’ll be in in a few minutes. >_

         The dark-haired man gave her a look halfway between a smirk and a pout, if such a thing was possible. Yes, it was – there it was, on his face. “We haven’t _seen_ each other in”-

         < _Loki, go into the other room and wait for me there_. > Even Maggie shivered at the change in Aoife’s tone. She watched a shiver – though she got the feeling it was a different kind – go through Loki, as well. “ _That isn’t fair_ ,” he tried to pout, unable to disguise his grin, or his flushing cheeks, as he turned to obey. “You _know_ what _that_ does to me.”

         Freddy groaned. “Get a room, you two.” Maggie privately agreed.

         Aoife sat back in her seat, a slight – and unapologetic – smile playing around the corners of her lips. < _I’m sorry, Ms. Burroughs. We’re listening. >_

        Maggie wondered how to start this. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable with conflict, per se, but coming right out and accusing someone of murder – even someone who was self-evidently guilty – was a hard thing to do. She settled for, “When were you last in Springwood?”

         Freddy shifted, and she got the impression he was thinking. Finally, he grunted, “About twenty years. Could be a little more or less.”

        The main thing to do was stay calm. “You’re lying.”

        “No, I’m not. Why the hell would I ever go back there?”

        “It’s your killing field. And you did go back.” Maggie reached into her purse and brought out the envelope, fanning its contents over the table between them. From beside her and next to Freddy, Annie and Aoife craned their necks to get a better look. Maggie realized belatedly that doing this after a meal probably hadn’t been her best idea ever.

       Freddy regarded the photos – some taken by the officers at the crime scene, others just digital snapshots by amateurs who’d discovered the bodies – dispassionately. “Seems like he knows what he’s doing,” he said at last. “Or she,” he added conscientiously with a glance at Aoife. “Or they. Lots of…tools, though. Like…these bag things he put the parts in. When did I ever do that?” He shrugged. “Besides, look at the presentation. It’s really…careful. I just slash.”

         “Some of them were slashed, too,” Maggie argued, despite the gaping hole of doubt opening in her chest for the first time. “Besides, sometimes you’re…elaborate with your deaths…”

        “Only in the dream world. Not real life, mostly. It’s…not efficient. This isn’t me.” He paused. “Actually, maybe you should talk to Hannibal in town. This shit looks sort of like the ‘Chesapeake Ripper’ stuff he used to do. It’s fancy like that, I mean. Not close enough to actually be him, I guess.”

        Maggie sat back. She hated to admit it, but he was right. _Why was I so quick to assume it was him? Aside from the slashes, and where it took place, there’s nothing about this that’s his MO._

        _You assumed it was him because it was Springwood, and because you hate him. You wanted it to be him._

        “But,” said her mouth aloud. “If it’s not you…”

        “It’s a copycat,” Annie interjected. They stared at her, and she shrugged. “Well, Hannibal had one once, and he told me about them. A copycat killer, or something like one. They copy your MO, and people think it was you.”

        < _Except it’s not exactly like a copycat, because there are noticeable differences in their killing style. I don’t think anyone’s copying Freddy on purpose_ ,> Aoife remarked. She looked thoughtfully down at the photos. < _I wonder why they put the things in the bags? >_

        “Nobody knows. And they’re not normal bags, either,” Maggie admitted. “Not plastic or anything. They were still analyzing pieces of them when I left to find you,” she added to Freddy. “They don’t know what the bags are made of.”

         “How do you know the killer isn’t trying to frame Freddy?” Annie asked Aoife. Maggie agreed; it seemed like as good an explanation as any, considering the history of the area where the killings had occurred.

         Aoife paused, and after a few seconds of thought, shrugged. < _I suppose I don’t. It’s just a feeling that I have. > _She looked down at the clock on her console. _< I'd better put Hel to bed.>_ 

 

* * *

 

 

         Aoife sat down in the white rocking chair under the paper lantern lamp that hung from the ceiling, and felt Hel clamber up the back of the chair, and down over Aoife’s shoulder and arm, before settling in her lap.

        Humming softly and affectionately, if tunelessly, Aoife reached down to stroke the girl’s cheeks and lips. They were so soft. She’d never have been able to put her fingers so close to Hel’s mouth when she was newly-hatched, which wasn’t the little girl’s fault. Babies were hungry creatures, and while the instinct for a human baby was to root and suck, the instinct for a baby like Hel was to chomp. It had taken months with a pacifier-harness over her mouth and jaw that Loki had conjured up, until Hel had stopped trying to bite everything and they had been able to get rid of it. Now, she looked up at Aoife with her gold-and-blue gaze, sagging back against Aoife’s chest and then perking back up, her eyelids slowly closing and then opening again, as she tried to keep herself awake. Her hands babbled briefly up over her head, before beginning to sign.

        _Mommy. Mommy. Mommy._

        Aoife actually found herself blinking tears from her eyes. < _That’s right, baby. I’m here. Why don’t we read a story before we go to sleep? > _If she didn’t do something to distract herself from the cuteness overload, it was quite possible she would actually burst. She Force-summoned a picture book from the large, overflowing bookcase. <“ _Where the Wild Things Are_ ,”> she read the cover aloud, and opened it to the first page. < _“The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him ‘WILD THING!’”… >_

        Hel nearly made it through the whole book, but by the last page, she had slumped back against Aoife, eyes closed and eyelids fluttering, minutely and faintly, every so often, her breathing slow and deep. Setting the book down, Aoife lifted her carefully into her crib and tucked the blanket around her, switching off the lamp. < _Good night, baby_. >

 

* * *

 

 

       Hel’s bedroom had once been the attic, since it was the biggest, airiest, and generally nicest bedroom in the house by consensus. Aoife took the stairs down to her room, rather than the somewhat cramped elevator put in for her convenience given the house’s three floors and basement.

       The hall was dark, the moonlight reflected off the snow and filtering through the windows the only light. Outside, Aoife could just make out the sound of the wind in the naked treetops. Occasionally the house gave a creak in response.

       _Someone is here_. The Force screamed it at her. _Someone is watching_. Aoife froze, listening.

       Nothing.

       _Should I go check on Hel? Bring her down to sleep in my room?_ Aoife sent her mind ahead, up to Hel’s room, scanning it.

       No. There was no one up there.

       And her legs were starting to cramp for the night; even with the lift, the prospect of running from one floor to another on nothing but a feeling of anxiety was ridiculous. _I’m just getting tired. It’s time for me to go to bed, too._


	2. Chapter 2

        Realizing that she wasn’t going back to sleep tonight, Aoife opened her eyes and looked blearily at the clock on the table beside her bed at the House. It was nearly five in the morning, but she’d only drifted off around two. The room was dark and she was alone; Loki had gone back to his own bed. He liked his mattress better.

        She rolled over. She was probably going to have to nap later today.

        She supposed she should be grateful; she had no memory of the dream that had woken her up.

        But she knew which one it was.

        She wondered again if she should talk to Freddy about this. But no _…I can handle it_. Besides, she had the inexplicable feeling that getting anyone else involved would be…dangerous. For them, and her.

        _Don’t think about it. Let’s read, or something_. She had just switched on the soft, pinkish-shaded bedside lamp when it hit her like a wave.

        _The boiler room_. She was already dragging herself out of bed and Force-pulling pants, socks, a bra and a shirt from her wardrobe and dresser even as she fully processed the feeling.

 

         Now, the sound of her booted feet on the metal grille floor echoed in the boiler room’s relative silence. < _Freddy?_  > No answer.

         She backed into the corner of an alleyway between two rows of vertical pipes, and felt him behind her. “Aoife? What the hell are you doing here? What the _fuck_ is your problem? You got some kind of death wish, you just go walking into places like this in the middle of the night”-

         He'd never gotten angry about her coming unannounced before.

         She could feel the fear on him, not that either of them would ever admit it. < _I…felt something. Is anything…is something wrong? >_

        He paused, and she waited as patiently as she could. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “After I left the House, I went to the Lonely for a little while.” Aoife nodded; he smelled like alcohol pretty strongly on top of his usual smokiness – whiskey, maybe, in addition to beer. “Then I came back here. And…” He scanned the area absently. “I don’t know. Some shit on my workbench…seemed like it wasn’t where I left it. Stuff like that. Just a feeling I got.” He shrugged. “But like I said, I’d had a few by then, so it’s not like I was thinking too great. You probably just heard me being drunk and confused in your head.”

        < _Are you okay? >_

        He grinned at her. “Course I am. I’m Freddy Krueger, I’m always okay. Better than okay, in fact.” He let the glove fall to his side, and Aoife lowered her still-activated blade. “But…” he shrugged again, aimlessly, glancing at her, before he seemed to change his mind. He shot her a snarky grin. “Hell, Aoife. First the leftovers, now this. What are you now, my mother?”

        She shifted, trying not to crack a smile. < _Would you like to stay over at the House tonight? >_  It occurred to her belatedly that that might not be the best idea...but no, Bob had been Freddy's friend, and Hela was all that was left of him now. Freddy wouldn't hurt her.

        He seemed to consider it for a minute. “Hell, no,” he said finally. “This is my own damn lair. Besides, Kathy – Maggie – whatever – might get pissy again. Couldn't have that. Speaking of which…don’t tell her about this.”

        < _I wasn’t going to. >_

        “Course you weren’t,” he said more quietly, almost to himself. He wasn’t being sarcastic.

        < _Do you want me to stay here for a while? >_

        Again, he looked as if he was considering saying yes. “I’m a big boy, Aoife. I can take care of myself.”

        < _Okay. I’m going to go back now, then. >_

        “Okay.”

        < _If you need – if you want any help with anything, you can call me.>_

        “I’m _fine_ , Aoife.” He was anxious for her to leave. He'd never been like that before, either. Normally, if he wanted to be alone, he just told her.

          _Maybe he doesn't want to scare me_.

         "Although," he added as she walked back toward the door that would take her home. "Kathy wants me to go and deal with this other 'copycat' guy. Or whatever it really is. Back home, you know. Thinking about saying yes."

        _Do you think that's who was here? Is that why you care now?_  She knew better than to ask.

        < _That might be a good idea_ ,> she said instead. < _I like Maggie. She seems interesting_. > She left him there, walking through the door that took her back to the House. She looked in on Hela, and then Loki, and then Crys and Thor, without knowing why. Then she got back into bed and read her political science textbook until the gray-blue light of dawn appeared around the edge of her window-shade, and it felt safe to close her eyes again.


	3. Chapter 3

        Being so close to Springwood again made Freddy irate. It was like an itch, but sort of inside his skull, where he couldn’t reach.

         Somehow, little Kathy had managed to rig together some contacts, actual contacts – people like her and like the denizens of the Big Three towns back up in the Dead Zone, who noticed the weird shit that kept happening, despite the best efforts of everything from the government to the forces of reality itself, to smooth it all over and keep it buried – who’d gotten her the crime scene photos. Thanks to them, there was new information: one would-be victim of the newest slasher had survived. The kid had no memory of the attack, but he’d been found at the mouth of a cave at the base of Little Mountain, within a few miles of the other attack sites.

        _No memory of the attack. Like the sleepwalking people ~~back home~~ back in Salem’s Lot_ , Freddy realized.

         Annie had said something, maybe to Aoife, before he and Kathy left, about the sleepwalking incidents moving out into Castle Rock and even Derry as well. If the shitheads over in Derry started to panic about this, Freddy reflected, a mysterious sleep-and-amnesia-causing entity roaming around Maine would be the least of everyone’s problems. _Cue angry fucking mob of “concerned citizens” and “pillars of the community,” complete with pitchforks and torches, ready to light some poor bastards up like Arianrod’s menorah candles._

 

         Calling the hole where the boy had been found a “cave” was pretty rich, or so it seemed to Freddy. It hadn’t even been visible from the country road they’d driven down to get here; they’d had to park the car and get out to hunt for it on foot in the brush.

         Now, they looked down at it for a while.

         It was just a hole in the ground. It ought to be more impressive, Freddy thought, considering what reality they were in, but in fact, it was depressingly ordinary-looking. Just a gap between some rocks, not quite at the foot of the mountain but close enough, only just big enough for a grown man to crawl into.

         “Pretty dinky,” he said aloud. Kathy glared at him, but he could see the same thought in her mind.

         _Then again, big things come in small packages_ , said the little “witch” voice in his head, which generally sounded like either Arianrod or Bob. _If you really want to hide, you don’t want it to be in a place where people would think to look._

         The hole wasn’t big, but it was empty and dark, and strangely so. You could almost feel the void of it, sucking at you faintly like a tide.

         Why weren’t there people – or at least evidence of people – around here? Why not a gift shop or a ranger station or a little stand with a map plastered on it or something? Why no weird, local attempts at merchandising? Why no empty beer cans or cigarette butts or even used condoms – what kind of a place like this didn’t get a shitload of kids sneaking out to it to party? Hell, there hadn’t even been any mention of this cave existing until they’d found the brat there.

          _Because nobody but us knows it’s here._

          _Maybe it’s not even here all the time. Maybe you have to be looking for it._

          The trees around them seemed unusually quiet. The wind had gone away. Even the light seemed more overcast. The hush around them now was like the cave, empty and hungry, consuming sound.

         Kathy said, quietly, “It wants us to go in. Doesn’t it?”

         Freddy nodded slowly.

 

         Kathy climbed in first, which made Freddy vaguely annoyed, but it ended up probably being a good idea; she wound up climbing faster. The hole was barely big enough to admit them; someone the size of, say, _Jason_ probably wouldn’t even fit. Kathy had opted for what Freddy knew were hiking/nature-exploring-type clothes, which looked new and fairly expensive, but at the time, Freddy hadn’t seen the point. He’d never admit it now, but he was finding his usual sweater and jeans slightly constrictive for climbing over the rock handholds and minutely uneven surface of the steeply inclined passage floor, which kept them both from plummeting straight down the shaft. His hat was beginning to get _really_ annoying; the brim limited his field of vision, even if it only hid the passage ceiling, and made his surroundings feel even more claustrophobic.

         He’d never say so aloud, but it reminded him of being in a grave. Not that he knew what that felt like, technically. But it was how he’d always imagined a grave would be.

        _I’m dead. I’m Freddy Krueger, and I’m dead. It doesn’t matter if there’s no air. It doesn’t matter if there’s no room to breathe. I don’t need air. I don’t need to breathe. I’m already dead._

_~~Kathy needs air, though~~._

_She’ll be fine. And even if she’s not, I don’t care._

         And if…if something happened to her, so what? _Not like being dead is the end of the world, anyway. Clearly._

         It was hard to tell how much time had passed since they’d begun. Kathy couldn’t reach the flashlight she’d brought to look at her watch, needing both hands to do the same combination of climbing and controlled-sliding down the tunnel that Freddy was doing behind her. After awhile, it got completely dark. They couldn’t see where the tunnel ended; they couldn’t see each other. Even Freddy couldn’t sense much, and it bothered him because he wasn’t sure why not. And there was no room to turn around.

         They could escape into the dream world if they had to. Probably. Except Kathy might not go with him.

         So they kept going down.

 

         The tunnel opened up gradually, and spat Kathy out first, onto the stone floor of the cave. She switched on her flashlight; Freddy hissed as the harsh white light seared across his vision. Blinking hard, he struggled out of the tunnel and straightened up slowly. The cave was bigger than it had seemed before the light; it tapered off into darkness at either end. He listened; it was completely silent in the cave. There weren’t even the kinds of sounds that caves had in movies sometimes, like distantly dripping water or whatever.

         Complete silence. The sounds he and Kathy made – their footsteps, their breathing (including his – hey, old habits died hard, _no pun intended_ ) – seemed unnaturally, obtrusively loud.

         _We’re pretty hard to miss down here, aren’t we?_

_Or we would be. If something else was down here with us._

 

         As they walked down the cave – Kathy took from her vest pocket one of the little colored glowsticks Freddy had seen around some of the teen parties he’d crashed, lit it up, and set it down by the mouth of the tunnel they’d entered by, its green light continuing to illuminate the area even after they moved away from it; Freddy couldn’t help but be impressed; he’d never even considered the possibility of getting lost down here – the flashlight beam darted over rock formations that glistened like ice. Freddy could just about remember “stalagmite” and “stalactite” from school; that didn’t even begin to cover what some of these things were. There were vein-like ridges in the floor, and things on the wall that sort of looked like the pipe parts of pipe organs – sort of, but not really; it was the only thing Freddy could think to compare them to, aside from radiators or some kind of tree roots maybe – and then there were other formations that really did look like roots, and still others that hung down and looked like vines, until you touched them and they were rigid stone after all. He let himself take it all in, knowing he’d never have the words to describe it like it really was.

         “Wish Aoife was here,” said his mouth before he could stop it.

        And he rolled his eyes at the shocked look he was getting now from Kathy. “What? Better her than me. I don’t like being underground. Makes me feel too much like a dead guy. But she’d be into this. You’ll see once you’ve known her longer. She’s one of the biggest nerds I’ve ever met. She’d think all this was just _fascinating_.”

        Yeah…Aoife, down here. Of course she’d have a hell of a time getting down that hole, but once she was down here…he could just about see it. Her eyes lighting up, whole body standing to attention just for a moment, and then collapsing into helpless, quivering excitement, her hands flapping on her wrists and wrists flapping on her arms. Maybe she’d write about it or take pictures with some fancy Star Wars equivalent of a camera, but maybe she’d just keep talking about it for the rest of the night, and the images would get added into her memory, into her mind, one more sight to see on the rare occasions she let him in there…Freddy took a deep breath. Kathy was still staring at him. He’d probably been staring into space for a good minute or so now.

         _Stabby thoughts_ , he reminded himself. _I’m Freddy Krueger and that’s what I think about. I think stabby, bloody thoughts._

         “Come on,” he snapped at Kathy. “And mind your own fucking business, how about.”

 

        “Look,” Kathy whispered, voice echoing off the walls, which glittered faintly as the beam hit them. Freddy was about to snarl at her to be quieter, but then he followed her gaze up to the cave ceiling.

        The ceiling was covered in swirling…marks. At first, they looked like nothing recognizable; Freddy was about to wonder aloud if maybe they were some kind of natural thing that could happen to rocks (or maybe some kind of scorch mark?) when something clicked and his eyes and his mind put it together.

        _They’re drawings_.

        Most of the marks didn’t seem to represent anything, or at least nothing Freddy had ever seen. They were just lines. But some of them – and this was, he suspected, what had tipped him off – looked like people. Well, sort of. Stick figures. Some of them, anyway. Some of them were…well, they could have been people, but they looked like some kind of clouds, or lumps of rock maybe, with things that might be faces or at least dots or dashes that might be eyes.

         “Did cavemen or something do that?” he asked aloud.

        “I don’t know,” Kathy admitted. “Maybe. But they’re kind of…high up. And there’s not so many animals. Buffalos and horses and stuff like that. Most cave paintings have animal subjects – usually, it’s people that are rare to find. Not that I’m an expert, but I read that somewhere.”

         “Does it…I mean, it kind of looks like…like a story.” Freddy shook his head, frustrated as he searched for the words he meant. “I mean, hell, I don’t know, I just…get that from it.”

        “No, I think you’re right. It’s some kind of narrative.” She pointed up to one set of markings, a little off to the side of the rest, at the far end of the ceiling in this part of the cavern. “That one, though.”

        Looking at it was like dropping into a deep pool of icy water. There was something physically sickening about looking at it – but as with so many of the other drawings, it didn’t look like much more than abstract shapes. As Freddy forced himself to keep staring, though, his mind gradually started to put the lines together into something at least a little recognizable.

        He heard himself say, “It’s blowing up.” He looked over at Kathy. “The thing in the picture. It’s exploding. It’s being destroyed.”

         Kathy nodded. “I can see that, too,” she said slowly. “I wonder what it is that’s blowing up?” The flashlight beam moved idly down and around the cave – and in the darkness ahead of them, someone was standing there.

         “ _Fuck!”_ Freddy’s mouth yelled, hand rising, gloving itself, as he ran at the figure – the _thing_. Seeing it too, Kathy yelped and focused the light on it.

        Freddy stopped as he realized what he was seeing. It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t any living thing, at least not anymore. In the light, it looked to be a thick, rounded stalagmite – those were the ones pushing up from the ground, right? – of the same white, shimmering, milky rock as most of the cavern.

        A naked skull sat on top of it.

        He drew closer to the skull, and Kathy followed him. “It’s not human,” she whispered, and Freddy could see that, too – it was small, and too perfectly round, and the eye sockets were too small. Beady.

        But humanoid in other ways, he noted. One of those central nose-holes, even if it was too small, and a mostly human-looking jaw.

        Except for the teeth. Those teeth weren’t human, unless someone had found a way to mix human DNA with the DNA of a tiger or something. The teeth weren’t even like Bob or Hela’s teeth; their teeth were sharp, but smaller; shark-like. Dangerous, and unsettling before you were used to them, but somehow not…not like this.

        As Kathy examined the skull tentatively, Freddy peered around. They stood now at the mouth of a bigger cavern; he couldn’t see much except the outlines of more rock formations in the gloom, but he could see that the ceiling of this cavern got lost in shadow. _It must go up pretty far_. He couldn’t see the other end of the cavern, either. No telling how far back it went. He couldn’t even see most of the floor a few feet beyond where they were standing. He had the feeling there was a dropoff at some point.

        “Come on, Kathy,” he said aloud. “Time to go back.”

        She looked annoyed, but somehow didn’t argue. “What has a skull like that, do you think?” she asked instead.

       “Hell, I don’t know. Nobody I’ve ever killed.”

       “It looked…sort of human.”

       “Sort of, yeah. But not really.”

       “No, not really. Do you think it’s…related to…to Hela’s people?”

       Freddy considered it. “Maybe. I don’t think so. Bob – he was her…well, she’s his kid, you know – Bob Gray used to say his kind were…’arachnoid.’ I think that was the word. Like spiders, you know? And they have those exoskeleton things, right? I mean, Bob’s people, they look human and everything, but that’s just to blend in, sort of. I don’t think they’ve got actual bones.”

       Kathy shivered. “Do you think one of them did the killings in town? I didn’t want to bring it up back there with Hela and everything, but maybe some of them aren’t as”-

        “It’s possible, I guess.” Freddy tried not to show relief as the sickly green light from Kathy’s glowstick became visible up ahead. “It’s not their MO, though. Usually, they kill to eat. They don’t mutilate people and then just leave the bodies lying around; at least, I don’t know why they would. It’d be a waste of meat. And I never saw them do anything like those bag-things. That kind of thing…I don’t know, but it seems like an ‘individual preference’ type of thing, not a predator thing.”

        “A ‘lone serial killer’ type thing.” She nodded, and looked over her shoulder at the mural cave. “Do you think whoever it was lived down here?”

        Freddy shifted. “Seems like it.”

        “I wonder whose the skull is, though.”

       “I don’t know. Trophy from another victim, maybe.”

       “But it’s killed so many times. Why aren’t there more of them? Why was that one up on a stand – why was it being displayed like it was so special? And if it wasn’t a human skull, then what was it?”

        “I don’t know, but let’s talk about it in the car.”

        “You’re _scared_ ,” she sneered as he moved aside so she could climb back into the tunnel first.

        “Nope,” he lied easily. “Not one bit.”

 

        “There’s one thing we know,” she said thoughtfully as they were driving away. It felt like the cave entrance, and the woods around it, were watching them go. “Well, one thing we sort of know.”

        “Yeah?” he growled. He was tired of talking about that place. It had been beautiful, sure, but it had also felt like somewhere they distinctly weren’t wanted. Obviously, Freddy was used to being in places where he wasn’t wanted, but this had been a lot more…aggressive.

       “Well, if we assume that the being doing these killings was the person who lived in the cave and did those drawings, and if it was just one person who did them all on his own, then…we know it was someone _tall_.”


	4. Chapter 4

        Aoife jerked awake, the lacy canopy of her bed in the Quiet Room coming into focus as she opened her eyes hesitantly, unsure of what she’d see.

        She was alone in the boiler room. She could feel it. She could feel every inch of the place, and it was all accounted for and completely normal. And the furnace was burning almost cheerily, which meant that wherever he was right now, Freddy was okay, too. _Everything is fine. Everyone is fine._

        _It was just a dream._

         _But a returning dream, and I never used to have those_. She’d hoped that sleeping here would offer some kind of protection from it, but that didn’t seem to be working, at least not when Freddy wasn’t home.

         Aoife pressed her eyes shut until colors swirled against the insides of her eyelids, trying to banish the image of the unfamiliar face looming down over her.

        It wasn’t an inherently frightening face to someone who’d met or at least seen all the different species of sentient being that Aoife had in her life on Coruscant, and it hadn’t done anything to her.

         But the way it _looked_ at her. The way it _grinned._

         In dreams, sometimes normal things could be the most terrifying of all.

         She reached for one of the books stacked on her bedside table, and was soon engrossed. She had nearly forgotten about the man from the dream when the wave of adrenaline and dark, alien energy washed over her, sending her retching onto her side.

         As soon as she could move again, she was out, dragging herself over the catwalk, to the nearest door that could take her home.

 

         The house was silent, Aoife’s rather ungainly footfalls echoing on the hardwood floor. < _Crys? Thor? Loki? Hela?>_

         Belatedly she remembered that Crys and Thor had been planning on going snowshoeing, and then into Castle Rock, for the day. She found Hela first, the toddler scribbling intently with her crayons at her little craft table in the corner of the den. She looked up at her mother’s arrival, but was too invested in her task to stop even for Aoife. _Hel?_ Aoife asked her now, examining her in the Force.  < _Are you all right, baby? >_

        Her daughter nodded, looking bemused but thankfully not upset by her mother’s panic. Aoife tried to make her voice calmer. < _Nipster? Where is Daddy Loki? Do you know? It’s very important. >_

         The girl pointed and mentally indicated _upstairs_ ; his bedroom. Aoife considered bringing her, but who knew what she might encounter up there? No, best to keep Hel content and apparently safe enough down here, away from any potential…encounters.

          Normally, Aoife would have taken the small elevator by the coat closet, but she knew it would make too much noise, so she climbed the stairs as quickly as she could, and soon she found herself approaching the door to Loki’s bedroom, right next to her own. She probed the room in the Force. There seemed to be nothing untoward, nothing unusual present.

         _At least, not anymore_.

         She nudged the door, which was ajar, and it creaked open slowly.

         And there was Loki, lying in bed, apparently napping. Alive, healthy, and deep asleep.

         And then Aoife’s “Second Thoughts,” as her Terry-Pratchett-fan-mother called them, said: _Wait…_

         _Why is he napping? He knows he’s the only adult home!_

          Loki wouldn’t leave a nineteen-month-old with the power to climb walls and turn doorknobs unsupervised. The man – well, the person – wasn’t exactly father of the year, inasmuch as Aoife knew from talking to Thor and Angrboda, but he’d been excellent with Hel and besides, he knew not to leave a child unattended. That was just common sense.

        She Force-nudged him awake, and his green eyes fluttered open blearily. “Oh…hello, Aoife.” He blinked, and began to sit up in bed. He was still fully clothed; he was even wearing his coat and scarf. “What is it? Have Crys and Thor returned?”

         < _Loki, what are you doing in bed? How did you get here? >_

         “ _What?_ What do you mean, how did I…” Loki looked down at himself, and then Aoife saw his gaze dart to the sleek digital clock beside his bed.

        “I don’t know,” he said at last, quietly. He wasn’t panicking, but his bewilderment scared Aoife.

        < _Try to remember what you were doing before this, Loki. Please. I…felt something enter this house. I felt it all the way from Freddy’s. It’s gone now, but…it was here. >_

        “I…” Loki’s brow puckered in concentration. “I don’t…I can’t recall…” his voice trailed off, and after a few interminable seconds, he murmured in a low voice, empty of affect, all his mental energy focused on remembering, “I…saw something…in the woods.”

        < _What did you see? >_

        “ _I remember nothing_.” He blinked, and his voice returned to normal as his gaze focused on her. “Is Hel safe?”

        < _Yes, she’s fine. She was just drawing downstairs when I came in. >_

        “Well…I am fine, too.” He gave her a small smile. “Perhaps it’s best not to worry until we have something to worry about, hmm? Ironic as I realize it is for me to be the one saying so. We will talk to Annie or to Dr. Lecter about this as soon as we can.” He climbed out of bed, and she watched him stretch like a cat. “I’ll have to change these sheets sometime before tonight,” he added, wrinkling his nose. “But in the meantime, shall we go down and see Hel?”

* * *

         It was that time of the day when the sun was just about to begin going down, when it was still light but you could feel the day’s end approaching. Aoife could smell it in the chilly air like the hints of someone’s bonfire or chimney smoke from town on the wind.

         She squinted up at the woods next to the house now, first and foremost admiring the black branches against the slowly pinkening sky. They made a kind of inky, interwoven framework, like a metal grille or the edging on the panes of a stained glass window. Painting and most similar fine-motor activities had always been a limit of Aoife’s Force-enhanced physical abilities, but she’d often imagined watercoloring a paper sunset colors and then painting, or drawing with calligraphy pen, the dark tangle of lines over it. She wondered if people would even recognize the image out of its context in such a way.

         Something caught her eye. _An animal?_ No, it had been more like a rag of cloth, caught on a branch, waving in the wind.

         But nothing was there.

         The woods were quiet. Should there have been bird sounds, or something, at this hour?

         A part of her wanted to go back into the house, lock the doors, and try to forget.

         But she knew she wasn’t going to.

 

         It felt stupid, walking out like this. Her footsteps crashed down through half-frosted-over snow and dry, dead brush. She was making a racket. If something was out here – _and it might be_ – it was going to hear her coming. _I don’t even know what I’m looking for!_

         But she found that she did know the general direction she should be going. She knew she was heading deeper into the trees, and downhill. The light was just starting to go, as the sky turned fiery. _I shouldn’t stay out here much longer. If I don’t find something soon, I’m turning around-_

         Something hard and cold was hanging from a branch, and Aoife walked into it. When her heart had started beating more normally again, she took it in her hands and peered at it.

         _A camera._

         A few feet later, she found another camcorder, screen static, wedged into the top of a hollow, blasted half-tree.

        They persisted, every fifty feet or so. Always something with a screen; usually a camera, draped across a branch or hanging artfully down, like decoration. Not in use, clearly – maybe broken – but still powered up and turned on.

        _They’re not plugged into anything; there are no wires anywhere._

        _What’s keeping all the batteries charged?_

        Aoife stopped and turned, looking around. She’d come to a clearing; it wasn’t too far from the yard; it actually seemed familiar, like she’d walked out here before. All of this hadn’t been here then.

        Had it?

        Aoife took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. _You never know how much you miss because you weren’t looking for it._

        _If these have always been here…someone didn’t want us to see them._

         _Why are we able to now?_

        She took in the dozens – maybe even hundreds – of cameras of various sizes and styles decking the surrounding trees. So many lenses – so many screens – and all pointing at her.

        She was being watched.

        She left quickly; it wasn’t her place anymore, if indeed it ever really had been. To linger would not only be rude; it would be _dangerous._

         _“I saw something in the woods,”_ Loki had said. She shivered, and willed herself not to look behind her. The feeling of being watched persisted even after she left the cameras behind, until she was back inside the house, with the window-shades down.


	5. Chapter 5

        “’Someone tall’?” Crys stirred her hot tea thoughtfully as she sat beside Aoife, across from her father and newfound sister, processing what they’d said.

        Something stirred in her memory; from a few Halloweens back, maybe? _The Tall Man_. The words surfaced and she knew they were connected to something she’d researched for a costume, something funny…she’d also gotten Aoife to help her do a Youtube video about it for the occasion…it was on the tip of her mind, but she couldn’t quite remember.

       “Aoife, what was that video we did?” she asked her friend aloud. “On Youtube? That Halloween one, from…from like…the year before last, maybe? I wore a costume for it…”

        “Don’t you do a million of those?” Freddy snapped irritably. “What’s fucking Youtube got to do with this anyway?”

        Aoife considered for a moment, and then, Crys watched it come to her. _Oh, yeah. The Slender Man one._

       “What the hell is a ‘Slenderman’?” Freddy growled.

        “I researched him a little when we made the thing,” Crys volunteered. “He’s this thing…what are those things, Aoife? Creatures people aren’t sure exist? There’s a special word”-

        _Cryptids._

        “Right, that’s it. He’s one. It started out as this one ‘Creepypasta’ – that’s this site where people go and post horror stories and scary stuff they made – but there’s a few badly-photoshopped pictures up online somewhere and now some people think he’s real. There’s apparently all these old myths about him – like I guess the Germans have some folk stories or whatever about something called the ‘Tall Man,’ at least according to these people, and I think that’s what made me think of”-

        “I am not,” interrupted Freddy, “going hunting for fucking _Bigfoot_.”

        But Maggie/Katherine was still looking over at Crys intently. “And what is the ‘Tall Man’ supposed to _do_? What does the Slender Man actually _do_?”

        Crys tried to remember more; it had been a couple years ago. She had notes somewhere, probably. She shrugged, and raised her right index finger skyward, Superman-style. “ _To the internet!”_

        Freddy groaned inwardly. _Can’t they do anything without the fucking internet?_ he wondered as they left him there at the table.

 

         “Hello, Fred,” he heard Loki say absent-mindedly a few minutes later, as the other got in from…well, from wherever he had apparently been. Freddy had been trying to decide whether to stay here – the TV here was bigger and newer than his, but there was Hel underfoot, hanging out down here after getting bored with her parents upstairs, drawing as usual at her table in the corner of the den – or go back to the boiler room. “Hey,” he grunted, belatedly, at Loki as the man – or woman, or whatever Loki was feeling like today; it wasn’t immediately clear which he was dressed like from the brief view Freddy had gotten – turned into the den, calling for Hel.

         Hela looked up at the sound of Loki’s voice, and grinned at him. Loki found Hela’s smile almost painfully adorable, even though knew he probably shouldn’t – it was her teeth. They were supposed to look menacing, even terrifying, and when she got older, they might. Right now, they were small and pearly, if more pointed than was usual, and their quality of “ferociousness,” which might look genuinely dangerous when she was grown, now put Loki in mind of an abandoned litter of newborn Bilgesnipe he and Thor had found once behind Idunn’s garden sheds at the palace. The little creatures had been perhaps the size of small Midgardian dogs, and they had done their very best to intimidate the two princes with what were no doubt meant to be vicious snarls and fearsome roars. But despite their efforts, they could only squeak, and so unsteady on their legs were they that a couple of them had, with the force of their “roaring,” knocked themselves on their backsides. Hel’s teeth reminded Loki of those Bilgesnipe; he’d known they were a fearsome species and that he and Thor ought to be cautious, even afraid, but it had been impossible.

         What had happened to that litter? He tried to recall now. Perhaps he’d ask Thor later…

         Oh yes. Now he remembered. Thor had shown them to Frigga and Idunn. Idunn had drowned them.

 

         Loki blinked, fought off the shiver, and returned his attention to his daughter. “There’s new snow since last night, _kjaereling_ ,” he told her. “Shall we go for a sled?”

        She nodded, but also held up the crayon drawing she had been working on, apparently finished now, for Loki’s inspection. “ _Very_ good,” Loki assured her, green gaze flitting over the rather blobby images – until one of them caught his attention.

        Perhaps some corner of his subconscious, or else some buried memory, stirred, and prodded him. Or perhaps it was his seiðr that allowed him the moment of prescience that now caused him to take the drawing in one hand and Hel in his other arm. “Come, _kjaereling,_ we are going to find your mothers.”

        “ _They’re upstairs_ ,” Freddy yelled at his retreating back. “On the damn internet again.”

 

        Aoife, Crys, Maggie, and Loki looked down at the figure in the drawing – the white, faceless head, the almost absurdly long arms, and the oddly neat, almost bureaucratic black suit and tie – and then back at Hel. < _Hel?_ >asked Aoife at last. < _Who is this? >_

        The toddler thought for a minute, and then signed. Crys translated. “’My friend.’”

        < _And where did you meet him? >_

        The girl signed and pointed to one of Crys’ theological books that were scattered around the study. It had a medieval illustration of an angel on its cover.

       “You mean that he watches over you?” Crys clarified now. “Like an angel?”

        She nodded, and then pointed to Loki.

        “What do you mean, ‘Daddy too’?” Crys asked. “You mean that he watches Daddy Loki too?” Aoife felt her throat grow dry.

        “’When Daddy was tired,’” Crys translated for Maggie’s benefit, “’My friend put him to bed.’”

        Loki pressed his eyelids shut, trying to remember…that day. The…the woods, and then his bed…the memory was like trying to cup water in his palms.

        < _That day, > Loki_, Aoife whispered, blanching. < _He brought you back to the house. Gods, he was in our house…he must have walked right by Hel… >_ Her panic was curtailed as her brow puckered in sudden thought. < _But wait… >_

         Loki felt his blood run cold. “What do we do?” It had touched him. It had _touched_ him and held him in its clutches _~~just like Him~~_ and it had been in his _home_ and he couldn’t even _remember_ …

         “I’m calling Mom,” Crys declared, unable to hide the anxiety in her voice. “Have her get everyone together. The whole Zone could be in danger.”

         < _But if he was in our house, why didn’t_ -> began Aoife.

         “Hel, we need to borrow your drawing, okay?” Crys told the little girl. “We need to show it to some people, tonight.”


	6. Chapter 6

         If Maggie had been uneasy about sitting across from her father at dinner her first night in the Dead Zone, she was definitely apprehensive now.

         It was the silent ones that were the worst, she mused from where she sat on the “Hela-parents’” (Aoife, Loki, Crys, and Thor; Loki had referred to them as such) couch, beside Annie and Tracie Hallorann, the warm but taciturn dark-skinned woman who was apparently Annie’s “plus-one.” She could just about handle the ones who chatted with each other and gave her sidelong glances, but too many of them – the “SKS,” as Annie had explained matter-of-factly; the “Serial Killers’ Society” (“Yes, we really called it that”) – didn’t talk, or communicated with what looked like the same form of sign language that Hela used. She could feel their eyes on her. Did they know who she was in relation to Freddy? It was possible. She wondered if that counted for or against her.

         “We should be doing this up at the Shack!” one of the speaking ones yelled out now. From beside Maggie, Annie groaned.

         “That’s the one who owns the wax museum, isn’t it?” Tracie muttered to her.

         “Yes. Apparently this ‘cryptid’ thing didn’t get him.” Annie sounded dryly disappointed.

          Tracie laughed softly. “Don’t be mean.”

          “You’re right. And…I don’t want it to get him.” Annie paused, and then she said more quietly, “I don’t want it to get _any_ of them.”

         “I know, Annie.” Tracie took the other woman’s hand in hers and gave it a squeeze.

         “Meeting at the Shack would be dangerous,” another woman’s voice boomed out over the hum of conversation. Maggie turned to look at her. She was a large woman with deep bronze skin, bobbed dark hair, and catlike green eyes. She stood at the center of the room as the hush radiated out from her.

         “Arianrod Tasini,” Annie whispered to Maggie helpfully; Maggie flinched, startled, at the voice by her ear. “She’s our witch. She and Bob Gray founded the SKS, after he came up with the idea for the Dead Zone. She heard me and dug me out after I woke up, and she convinced Freddy to bring me with them when they decided to drive up here.”

          “What do you mean, ‘dug you out’”- Maggie began in spite of herself, but Arianrod had already started speaking again.

         “This thing stalks the woods for its victims,” she announced. “Going up to the Shack or the Place isn’t safe until we hunt it down. From now on, everybody stay in populated areas. People without lairs of their own, go down to Bob’s old place beneath Derry and stay there. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. Understood?” There was a general murmur of assent.

         “We should take in Mikey,” Annie murmured to Tracie.

        “Uh…are you sure, honey?”

        “Oh, I know he seems scary, but he’s only dangerous one day a year, really, and for her christening he made Crys this beautiful mask to hang on her wall”-

        “Why don’t we talk about it later?”

         Annie sighed. “Okay.”

        “Now,” continued Arianrod, “Crys has some information on what she thinks we’re dealing with.” She motioned Crys to stand up and take the floor.

         “Um, okay.” Crys took a deep breath. “So, we think this thing is a cryptid – that just means a creature that doesn’t officially exist – called the Slender Man. He usually appears as a tall, thin, pale, faceless being in a suit and tie, although some people also say he’s got tentacles sometimes. He’s associated in the mythology with fire; weather; the woods; night; technology, which malfunctions when he’s around…and children. Specifically, he preys on them. He’s known to slash his victims, stab them with things, and sometimes disembowel them and encase their organs in things that resemble plastic bags.” Mutters of commiseration, disgust, and some grudging admiration followed this grisly announcement.

        “We think he’s responsible for a bunch of recent attacks in Ohio, around where Dad used to live. He and Maggie here found a cave within a few miles of the killings that’s hidden, outside of ordinary perception, and we think he might have been living there. Now, for some reason, he’s decided to stalk up here.

         “We know he has power over people’s minds – he can be called if people think about him too much, although I don’t think we should worry about that at this point, since frankly he’s already here. He can erase people’s memories of him. We think that’s what all the sleeping and memory loss attacks have been about. He can also control people without them realizing it. People who’ve been alone with him, who act weirdly, maybe who get physically sick or weakened…they might be under his influence.”

         A tall, broad-shouldered man whose hair grew long over his face signed something at Crys. “No, Mike,” she replied. “We don’t think he’s the same species Bob was. I know they sound kind of similar in terms of ability, but the Slender Man is…something else.”

         Maggie crossed her own arms, trying not to look as if she was hugging herself. She should have realized that her father wasn’t the only supernatural killer out there, but for all the myths, ghost stories, and urban legends she’d heard in her travels, coming face-to-face (so to speak) with actual paranormal entities was rare. Now, she tried not to shiver.

         _There must be a way to kill it_ , she told herself. _There always is_. She began mentally running through all the ways she knew. _Holy objects, silver, water, sunlight, fire (a pipe bomb inserted into the gut, in Freddy’s case), turning their own weapons against them…_

         Crys was holding up Hela’s drawing from earlier. “That’s him. He’s been in our _house_. Little Hela’s seen him. We’ve got to _do_ something.” For the first time, there was fear in her voice.

         “Hang on a second,” someone growled. Maggie realized it was Freddy. Slowly, all heads turned toward where he was standing, up against the wall.

         Freddy glared back around at them now. “Wasn’t Aoife standing behind you?” he barked at Loki. “Near the kitchen door? Back when this little group therapy session started.”

         Loki’s brow puckered. “Well…yes, I thought so. Yes, you’re right, she was.”

         _“So where the hell did she go?”_


End file.
